Sarah Clarity Studios

Chapter 1: Before / After Storytelling

Created by Sarah Choi (prompt writer using ChatGPT)

Before / After Storytelling (Refits & Heirlooms)

For weapon concept artists working in Advanced Narrative Weapon Design—written equally for concepting and production artists.

Why before/after is a power tool

Before/after storytelling turns a single prop into a time capsule. When audiences see how a weapon used to be—and what it became through refits, repairs, and the hands that carried it—they intuit lineage, culture, and cost without exposition. This approach layers time, reveals culture, and gives the object a “voice.” It also scales elegantly for production: the same core mesh supports multiple states (factory, field-mod, commemorative, heirloom), letting teams ship narrative depth with controlled scope.

Time layers: building a stratigraphy of use

Time layers are the readable strata on a weapon: fabrication marks, first-service wear, field fixes, depot refits, ceremonial treatments, and late-life heirloom interventions. Think like a geologist. Early layers are machining lines under finish, witness marks from gauges, or heat-affected zones near welds. Mid-life layers are soot cones, brass kisses, sling-polish, and armorer stamps. Late layers include engravings for victories, mismatched parts from cannibalization, or a commemorative refinish that carefully preserves impact dents. Describe these layers in prose as a chronology so downstream teams know what must show through future skins and what may be covered.

Culture and “voice”: how objects speak

A weapon’s voice is a synthesis of the people and institutions around it. A strict doctrinal culture speaks through inspection marks, unit crests aligned to regulation, and standardized refit patterns. A frontier repair culture speaks through clever substitutions and rivet scars that prioritize function over uniformity. Ritual cultures imbue meaning with inlays, prayer knots, or lacquer plugs filling retired fastener holes. Write a short ethnography for the weapon family: who touched it, where scarcity forced improvisation, where pride demanded ornament, and which taboos constrained change. This becomes the rubric for every refit and heirloom decision that follows.

Refits: taxonomies that drive readable change

Treat refits as named categories so that every “after” state has a logic. Field refits are expedient, using found hardware, tape, wire, or whittled grips; they often conflict with clean UVs and should be authored as modular kits with their own masks. Depot refits are systematic, swapping whole subassemblies to a new standard; these keep socket transforms stable and are ideal for reuse across the family. Black‑market refits prioritize stealth, contraband add‑ons, or suppression; they alter silhouette riskily and must be constrained for gameplay readability. Ceremonial refits add livery, gold leaf, tassels, or scrimshaw; they change material stories more than silhouettes. Document each category in sentences that define where change is allowed, what materials are likely, and which marks accompany the work.

Heirlooms: preserving scars without fossilizing design

Heirloom treatments should feel curated, not pristine. The story is custodianship: someone chose which dents to polish around, which serial plates to re‑rivet, and which grip to replace with a carved piece of family wood. Explain which scars are “protected,” which are blended, and which are re‑interpreted as ornament (e.g., an impact crater filled with dark resin and ring-engraved). Define heirloom tiers that evolve finish—oils deepening into polymer, nickel accents on fastener heads, or decorative stitching over a field wrap—while keeping sockets, sight picture, and safety affordances unaltered. Production can then lock protected normal details and bake them into a reusable decal set.

Before/after boards: narrative orthos, not moodboards

Create a two‑page spread: left is “Before,” right is “After.” The left page reads like a museum placard: factory finish, depot markings, baseline attachments with serial references, and clean wear logic. The right page uses callouts to explain every delta as a complete sentence: what changed, why culture demanded it, and how time shows through. Include an inset “stratigraphy swatch”—a 3×1 strip that samples substrate, finish, and patina—so texture artists can match age across states. Downstream teams will use this spread to align on scope and to populate LODs without inventing new stories.

Material and finish logic across states

Write a materials paragraph for each state that anchors shader behavior. For factory “Before,” emphasize machining anisotropy, crisp edge breaks, low micro-scratch density, and uniform roughness. For field refits, specify mixed roughness from over‑oiled grips, soot near muzzle devices, and matte tape islands. For depot refits, note bead‑blast resets that leave polished islands where serialized plates were masked off. For heirlooms, narrate warm speculars from hand oils, subtle oxidation rings around inlays, and controlled high‑frequency micro‑scratches that sit on top of old dents, not under them. These paragraphs become the truth that material IDs and decal sets must express.

Attachment continuity: sockets as stable bones

Before/after storytelling breaks if attachments drift arbitrarily. Write a clear paragraph that commits sockets, transforms, and recoil paths as “bones” that survive every state. If an optic baseplate is replaced in the “After,” explain how its foot geometry and clamp position respect the original rail profile. If the culture bans optics in ritual contexts, say so and show capped mounts that keep silhouettes consistent. This keeps rigging and animation safe while permitting rich narrative skins.

Engraving, inscriptions, and language politics

Text on weapons is potent. Decide who wrote it (factory inspector, squadmate, owner, enemy), in what language, and with what tool. A stamped depot code feels bureaucratic; a hand‑chased phrase feels intimate; an acid‑etched warning feels authoritarian. Consider multilingual layers: early-life inspector stamps in one script, later-life owner poems in another. Explain legibility rules for gameplay (never on the sight picture), cultural rules for respect (avoid sacred words as casual patterning), and localization constraints (in-world languages vs real). Provide a short pronunciation note for VO/Audio if inscriptions will be read aloud.

Provenance systems: numbers that matter

Provenance turns marks into systems. Serial blocks that indicate factory lot, depot year, and subassembly lineage let fans read history the way numismatists read coins. Propose a coherent serial grammar and demonstrate it across the before/after states: a scratched original number beside a re‑stamped depot code; a tiny star punch indicating armorers’ approval; a triangular stamp showing a ritual blessing. Specify which stamps can stack and which must retire when new ones arrive. QA can then validate continuity, and UI can mine the system for lore entries.

Readability & competitive integrity

Story never outranks clarity. In every “After,” preserve the sight picture, class silhouette, muzzle length envelopes, and ejection readability. Ceremonial tassels must respect occlusion cones; wraps can’t hide safety positions; scrimshaw cannot turn the front post into visual noise. Write a short paragraph that lists immutable gameplay reads, then show a tiny “violation panel” demonstrating what is not allowed. This pre‑defends the design when a late request asks to hang a cloth over a vent or add an oversized charm.

Ethics & cultural respect

Before/after narratives easily slip into exoticism. State your ethics: represent cultures through research, not clichés; treat sacred symbols with earned context; avoid using tragedy as style. Explain consent metaphors for heirlooms—who had the right to refit this object? Was a captured weapon forcibly “civilized,” or did an owner lovingly add family craft? Draw a line around monetization: heirloom skins should honor craft and story, not sell shock value. Transparency matters: no blind boxes for “historic” drops, no skins that imply power or camouflage advantages. When your doc carries this stance, marketing and live ops have a clear guardrail.

Production patterns: how to package time for teams

Translate narrative into files and flags. Provide a common base mesh with variant gatekeeping via change sets: a lightweight delta layer for field refits (straps, wraps, bolt‑ons), a medium delta for depot subassemblies (stock, handguard, muzzle), and a material‑only delta for ceremonial/heirloom passes. Write paragraphs that describe naming conventions and directory structure in plain language so outsourcing partners can find and override the right layers. Include a short “bake order” note for texture and decal authors: which dents are baked in the normal, which are floaters, and which are material‑driven.

Rigging, animation & VFX notes for temporal continuity

State how motion vocabulary survives refits. If the charging handle was replaced, its travel, stops, and timing remain consistent. If a depot stock adds a folding hinge, describe collision envelopes and bone parenting. For VFX, explain how soot accumulation affects muzzle flash color and smoke density across states without changing gameplay readability. For audio, note which parts changed material (wood to polymer) and how that should modulate foley layers. These paragraphs let downstream teams maintain identity while expressing time.

Case templates: plug‑and‑play narratives

Offer three short templates teams can reuse:

Factory → Field Expedient: A conscript wraps a cracked grip with cloth dyed in unit colors; a salvaged carry handle becomes a rear sight. Keep sockets intact, add grime islands, and stamp a hurried armorer approval.

Depot Standardization → Elite Commemorative: Mixed-lot parts are brought to spec; later, the veteran commissions nickel inlays around preserved dents with a poem etched on the dust cover. Materials shift cleanly; dents remain; inscriptions are culturally vetted.

Captured → Adopted Heirloom: An enemy weapon is refit to home doctrine (trigger guard change, safety labeling) and later honored as a peace‑gift with mother‑of‑pearl panels. Language shifts across layers; taboos are respected; play readability remains stable.

Write each as a paragraph with the why, not just the what. Production can scale these stories across families by swapping only the cultural and material specifics.

Review gates & test stories

Close with narrative test cases written as prose so non‑artists can validate: cycle three states in the same scene and confirm the sight picture never changes; scrape the heirloom finish and ensure protected dents survive; translate inscriptions into three in‑world languages and confirm no sacred text was used frivolously; shoot in a dark biome with ceremonial tassels and confirm no target occlusion. When QA can read your tests like micro‑stories, your intent survives shipping.

Final thought

Before/after storytelling makes weapons feel lived‑in and loved without forcing exposition. Time layers, cultural voice, and heirloom logic anchor that story—and when you encode them as sentences, not just paint, every downstream team can carry the narrative forward with integrity.